In the south of the Mykolaiv region, with the first sun of spring, a new reality rises in the air: the smell of corpses. With the thaw, the numerous bodies of abandoned Russian soldiers begin to pose a problem.
Saturday [19 mars] last, in the video he sent to them as he does every evening, the governor of the region, Vitaly Kim, called on his constituents to contribute to the collection of the remains, as the temperatures begin to rise above 0°C. “We are not animals, are we?” he said to these men and women who themselves have already lost so many loved ones in this war.
Mykolaiv was among the first regional capitals attacked after Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine on February 24. After an incursion into the city center, the Russian troops were driven out by the Ukrainian army, leaving behind them a trail of charred tanks and armored vehicles. But the battle is still raging for this strategic city for Russia, which intends to advance along the Black Sea coast to Odessa, and no one can say how long the Ukrainian forces will manage to repel the assault.
The Russians retreated leaving the charred bodies of their own on the battlefield, says Vitaly Kim, who also sends us photos of corpses:
“There are hundreds like that, all over the region.”
True-false balance sheet
The governor asked that the bodies be put in cold rooms to be sent to Russia, where they can be identified by their DNA. But a month after the start of the war, no one knows how or even if the remains of soldiers are repatriated to Russia, where the results of the conflict are largely ignored. Moscow has blocked information on the reality of this bloody war and blocked access to Western media as well as social networks Twitter and Facebook on Russian territory.
The exact number of Russian soldiers who fell in Ukraine therefore remains a mystery. The official figure given by the Russian Ministry of Defense was 498 soldiers dead on Monday March 21[accordingtoAFPithasbeenrevisedto[selonl’AFPilaétéréviséà